Larry Ingrassia to receive SABEW Distinguished Achievement Award

Lawrence Ingrassia, managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, will receive the Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ highest honor, its Distinguished Achievement Award, for 2017.

The award is given to an individual who has made a significant impact on the field of business journalism and who has served as a nurturing influence on others in the profession.

“I’ve been fortunate to spend most of my career at three great newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and to work with some of the best journalists anywhere,” said Ingrassia in a statement. “Chronicling the vast changes in business and economics, and on the way people work and live, has become more important than ever. It has been fascinating to have a front row seat to help tell this story, and I’m truly honored by this award.”

Ingrassia will accept the award Saturday, April 29, 2017, at the SABEW Best in Business Dinner and Awards Ceremony in Seattle during the annual spring conference.

“Larry has been one of the most impressive and well-respected people in business journalism for years,” said Joanna Ossinger of Bloomberg and SABEW’s Distinguished Achievement Award Selection Committee chairwoman, in a statement. “We are proud to honor him and look forward to hearing his remarks during the Best in Business Awards Ceremony.”

With a career spanning more than 40 years, Ingrassia is one of the most accomplished business journalists in the country and has directed coverage that has won numerous Pulitzer Prizes, awards and other honors. He joined the Los Angeles Times in 2015 as managing editor.

Prior to the Los Angeles Times, he worked at the New York Times, as business editor from 2004 to 2012 and later as deputy managing editor for new initiatives. Coverage he directed at the New York Times won five Pulitzer Prizes – one each for national reporting, international reporting and commentary and two in explanatory reporting – and his reporters won numerous other journalism prizes, including Polk and Loeb awards.

In 2009, the judges of the Loeb Awards honored him with the Minard Editor Award for excellence in business and economic journalism for the New York Times’ coverage of the 2008 financial crisis, which was a Pulitzer finalist in the Public Service category.

He previously worked at the Wall Street Journal for 25 years, starting as a reporter in 1978 in the newspaper’s Chicago bureau, then working in various reporting and editing jobs in Minneapolis, London, Boston and New York, eventually becoming an assistant managing editor.

He began his career as a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, which he joined in 1974 after graduating with a journalism degree from the University of Illinois.